Bell & Cross

Pub Details

Address
Holy Cross
Holy Cross
Worcestershire
DY9 9QL
Telephone
(01562) 730319
Opening Times
Weekdays
12 - 3, 6 - 11
Sundays
12 - 10

Location

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Licensee information

Licensee name
Roger Narbet
Enterprise

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Good Pub Guide Recommended

Super food, staff with a can-do attitude, delightful old interior, and pretty garden
This charmingly well kept place is clearly run with loving care and attention to detail. Service is friendly and attentive, with everything geared to ensure that you have a most enjoyable visit. Successful as a dining pub yet still extremely welcoming if you're just popping in for a drink, it's in an unspoilt early 19th-c layout with five beautifully decorated little rooms and a kitchen opening off a central corridor with a black-and-white tiled floor. Rooms offer a choice of carpet, bare boards, lino or nice old quarry tiles, and there's a variety of mood - from snug and chatty to bright and airy and with an individual décor in each: theatrical engravings on red walls here, nice sporting prints on pale green walls there, and racing and gundog pictures above the black panelled dado in another room. Two of the rooms have small serving bars, with Banks, Enville, Timothy Taylors Landlord and a guest such as St Austell Tribute on handpump, around 50 wines (with about a dozen by the glass), organic soft drinks and a range of coffees; daily papers, coal fires in most rooms with regulars sometimes playing cards in one of the front two; piped music. A spacious lawn has well maintained picnic sets, and you get pleasant views from the garden terrace.

Good Pub Guide Food

As well as lunchtime sandwiches, panini and ploughman's, delicious dishes from a changing seasonal menu might include tomato, red pepper and cannellini bean salad with garlic ciabatta, fishcakes with prawn, chive and wine sauce, battered cod and chips, grilled bass fillet with roast tuscan vegetable salad and pesto rissole potatoes, pie of the day, yellow thai curry, and cannelloni of spinach gorgonzola with balsamic roasted vegetables.

Bar food times: 12 - 2 (7 Sun) , 6.30 - 9 (9.30 Fri, Sat) ; not Sun evening

Awards

Good Pub Information

Dogs allowed in: Dogs Bar

Rating

  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
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Rating: 3/5 (497 votes cast)

Reader Comments

The inside of this pub is very small - it's like going for a drink in someone's lounge

If this is "The Good Pub Guide's" Pub of the Year then the publication should consider changing it's name. I travelled some way to go for lunch and there is nothing remotely "pubby" about this place. I would say it's more a restaurant with a tiny bar area for a drink. My heart sank at the expensively printed menus indicating that it doesn't change too often and reminiscent of those omnipresent "pubs" next to a Little Chef on every main road and roundabout. There were some daily dishes which I chose and which was nicely cooked and presented but the food and the whole place was formulaic. Absolutely no atmosphere. Staff friendly and welcoming, no complaints there, apart from service being a little too brisk and referred to as "madam" the whole time, but really like being in an "adults only" Enterprise Inn, which is exactly what it was. My local pub has roaring log fires, home-cooked, regularly changing, food, great selection of ales etc and would knock this place into a cocked hat. I would love to know the criteria for winning "Pub of the Year". Is it sponsored by Enterprise Inns?

Having visited many times in the past in the evening, as a couple or in a group, I would agree that you came away feeling that you'd had a special time!
We have recently visited at lunchtime as a party of 4 and as a party of 13 celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary. On both these occasions the food was up to standard but there was a distinct lack of service. There was a lack of attention to detail; we had to ask to order drinks, meals served but with a delay before the vegetables arrived, long delay between courses etc.
We left the 60th apologising to our party as we had recommmended the venue and other than 4 of us, people had travelled from afar. We felt let down.

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